The third entry in EA's sci-fi horror series exchanges scares for action, but
is still an entertaining and atmospheric thriller.

The Dead Space series has been known for prioritising terror over the more base thrills of explosive gaming blockbusters. The first games' love-letter to sci-fi horror movies like Event Horizon, The Thing and Alien delivered EA a cult hit from an audience demanding nerve-shredding tension.

But with success inevitably comes escalation and, as EA announced Dead Space 3, complete with co-op multiplayer, swearing military types, giant tentacled beasties and booming weaponry, fans of the first two games wondered just where the terror had gone. And sure enough, there's little of it to be found in Dead Space 3.

While it's natural and right to mourn the loss of yet another survival-horror, focussing on what Dead Space 3 isn't does a disservice to what it is: a consistently entertaining sci-fi action game.

Once again players are cast as Isaac Clarke, the engineer with the ability to destroy the 'markers' that are scattered around the galaxy, malignant alien constructions that turn people into slavering mutant space zombies. At the beginning of the game, Clarke is hiding out in an apartment, contemplating life and growing a beard. That is until he's found by a group of soldiers looking to take him to Tau Volantis, an ice planet which could hold the key to destroying the markers once and for all. Initially there's nothing doing, until he finds out his ex-girlfriend, Ellie, has gone missing out there. So it's back off to the big black in his hulking space suit to cut up some necromorphs.

The main reason Dead Space 3 isn't as scary as its forebears is that Isaac is tooled up to the nines. The original Dead Space did enough to keep the tension up, but it's difficult to call it pure horror when your protagonist wanders around in an armoured onesie wielding a plasma weapon. Here Isaac has access to military grade weaponry, and can build unique weapons at any tool bench he comes across. Submachine guns with an underslung plasma cutter, a hydraulic melee weapon attached to a rivet shotgun, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, guns that fire coiled energy in a fizzing ball of death. You can craft it, as long as you've got the materials that are scattered around the game, or bought with real life money from the online marketplace.

A brief note on micro-transactions. There was an understandable fuss when EA announced that Dead Space 3 would allow you to buy crafting materials, with the worry being that their presence would impact on the game's balance. Fortunately, I played through Dead Space 3 without ever dipping into the marketplace, and never felt like I had to. As long as I was diligent in collecting resources, I always had enough to craft the weapons that I needed at the time. The issue in Dead Space 3 is one of perception and temptation. From the very beginning you are offered up a long list of blueprints of pre-designed weapons, many of which would be unattainable without opening your wallet, or saving up all your resources. On closer inspection, these weapons aren't anything special, and you'd be better off crafting your own as you naturally progress. It feels more like a salesman whispering in your ear "go, on, you know you want to" rather than EA actively forcing you to pony up. In this instance you can happily ignore it, though it's a concern that eventually publishers will start to design games that do demand it. So while Dead Space 3's micro-transactions don't spoil anything, they still have no place in a £40 game.

You could argue that the inclusion of the crafting model at all is down to micro-transactions. But as it turns out, the crafting is arguably Dead Space 3's most interesting aspect. The variety of weaponry enhances combat that is punchy and weighty, but somewhat clunky. There's a definite sense that Dead Space 3's control system is designed around a slower-paced game than this one, but the arsenal you are afforded makes combat interesting and engaging. It helps that the dismemberment system is still intact, as you lop off wriggling alien limbs to slow down their advance. You can then use your kinesis to freeze nasties on the spot, or pick up sharp limbs and impale their previous owners. Taken as whole, the combat system is rather canny, and nicely underpins a game that takes the kitchen-sink approach to stage-setting.

Dead Space 3 makes big-budget blockbuster schizophrenia something of an art. The game starts with a shootout in a Blade-Runner styled city, before quickly moving upwards to a crumbling flotilla of giant spaceships. This section of the game is most familiarly Dead Space, blood-spattered industrial corridors, groaning metal constructs infested with ghouls, the prospect of a monster closet around every corner. But within that familiar setting, Visceral constantly is constantly throwing new stuff at you: quiet and eerie exploration, blistering shootouts, light puzzling, anti-gravity sections, turrets. There are optional missions which reward you with resources, and even the co-op has its own specific missions, and a very neat mechanic where players can see enemies that the other cannot. At one point you're kicked out of the interior altogether, allowing you to fly around the destroyed flotilla in a dazzling section out in space, the entire galaxy stretched out before you in a glittering starscape.

And when Visceral think you might be bored of that, it's down to the icy climes of Tau Volantis, which changes the tone of the game completely. Now it's giant monsters with glowing orange weak spots, rappelling up crumbling cliffs, frantic (often frustrating) defence against hordes of nasties and, oh, it's all very entertaining and wonderfully polished. But curiously calculated.

The oddest thing, however, is how a game that's so breathlessly paced for a good 12 hours succumbs to bloat. As Dead Space 3 creaks towards its denouement, you get the feeling that Visceral packed the first three quarters of the game with such incident, they ran out of stuff to include in the final stretch. It's never dull, but never as consistently engaging either.

It is a minor side-effect of a game that --micro-transactions aside-- is eager to please. Generous with its time and beautifully polished, Dead Space 3 may feel like a check-list of blockbuster game development, with exacting design occasionally feeling as cold as Tau Volantis itself, but it's an entertaining action-thriller that does more than enough to keep the pulse up.